Knowledge management (“KM”) is an approach to improving organizational outcomes and organizational learning by introducing into an organization a range of specific processes and practices for identifying and capturing knowledge, know-how, expertise and other intellectual capital within the organization, and for making such intellectual assets available for transfer and reuse across the organization. KM acts to transform and institutionalize information and intellectual assets into enduring value.
An increasing amount of intellectual assets is being exchanged within an organization via e-mail. E-mail is being used not only for traditional corporate communications relating to corporate policies and procedures, but it is also used for the exchange of information, both on a company-wide level and smaller subsets, regarding fundamental business processes such as research and development, manufacturing, marketing, sales activities, and the like.
Notwithstanding the important of e-mail, only a small portion of e-mail traffic is ever captured and placed within a KM system. A typical behavior pattern is that an individual only transforms data into a document and checks such a document into a KM repository if they believe that the document will be useful for an extended period of time. In addition, individuals also tend to wait until a project or an escalation is finalized before generating documents to place within a KM repository. Unfortunately, much of the value from a KM system comes from failed or incomplete projects and, as a result, relevant information is omitted.
Moreover, even if a portion of e-mail traffic is placed within a KM system, such e-mails are often not organized in an optimal fashion. For example, an e-mail may be associated with a single folder (e.g., “Ramp-Up”, etc.) despite its being applicable to multiple topics (e.g., “NetWeaver04”, “Customer X”, “J2EE”, etc.). Furthermore, relevant information may be stored in attachments making it difficult to search.